The Scene and Herd

Running around my old haunts last night, I saw a sign up outside Boo Radley’s that said “Welcome Back All!” Since it’s just after Labour Day, I figured they were talking to all the students moving back to the city and starting things up again. But there are no colleges or universities around Boo Radley’s and it’s definitely not a student hang out, not by a long shot (undesirable area, completely out of the way). Still, I think they thought they should say something about school starting, because the city changes in September. You feel different, optimistic and such. It’s a remnant of twenty years of Septembers when you were beginning something new.

I haven’t been able to begin much lately. I’ve kind of a writer’s block, I guess, and my days feel unproductive. I know what the problem is: I’m stuck on a style that’s starting to bore me. This has happened before. I know I have to wait for a new approach to strike, and then I can write like crazy. But until then, I’m going to feel sluggish. Yesterday I spent hours at the library and couldn’t write a thing. I walked home with Johnnie around dinnertime and the elementary kids were all coming home from school, tired and sweaty in new clothes, looking like they wake up with purpose each day, the little ragamuffins. I was jealous of them, sort of wishing that September meant something new for me too.

Perhaps Jack Layton shares my nostalgia. I noticed he chose to use a back-to-school metaphor to describe the likelihood of an election. “Mr. Harper has already decided that he’s gung-ho about going out into the schoolyard and having a rumble with Mr. Ignatieff,” he said, perhaps trying to illustrate the immaturity of the two men. I think that those guys over at parliament are suffering from a block (and a bloc? I’m sorry, but I couldn’t…) of their own. They’re stuck on this election business as a means of persuasion, communication. It’s become their default style and you can tell they’re bored stiff of the business (not to mention their readers), but a new approach just hasn’t struck.

Layton might be aiming to make Harper and Ignatieff look childish with his metaphor, but at least those kids rumbling in the schoolyard go back to their desks when the bell rings. We’d be so lucky if the government would sit quietly for a few hours every day, do some math or something. I’m willing to bet Harper and Ignatieff are as jealous as I am of the students around here, the ones getting up in the morning to get things done, the little ragamuffins.